Performing Womanhttp://www.performingwoman.com
Body Image Activism and BurlesqueTue, 19 Sep 2017 02:01:35 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2UNPOPULAR OPINION: Your Internet Marketing Business Actually Isn’t Feministhttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/08/13/internet-marketing-not-feminist/
http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/08/13/internet-marketing-not-feminist/#commentsMon, 14 Aug 2017 03:14:31 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=10305The economics of feminism are complicated. The first wave — suffrage — was about political freedom for (white) women. The second wave — free love, the pill, and the sexual revolution — was about sexual freedom for women. (Acknowledging, again, that the movement was still mostly only inclusive for white women.) With women given the right to make political decisions (especially after suffrage […]

The first wave — suffrage — was about political freedom for (white) women.

The second wave — free love, the pill, and the sexual revolution — was about sexual freedom for women. (Acknowledging, again, that the movement was still mostly only inclusive for white women.)

With women given the right to make political decisions (especially after suffrage was achieved for women of color) and to make decisions about whether or not they wanted to have children or have the heteronormative relationships promoted in the Leave it to Beaver version of America, it was only a matter of time before women began looking toward true economic freedom.

In a capitalist society such as ours, your worth is defined by your economic contributions. Sure, you can vote, but if you can’t pay your taxes, you’re still not a valuable member of society. Sure, you can have sex before marriage, but if you’re not able to pay your bills, you still have to rely on someone to take care of you.

When I was a young(er) woman, I heard about the third wave of feminism, but I feel as if we’ve actually had a series of small waves — choppy waters — instead of a true wave to wash away the economic struggles of women in the present.

We’ve been asked to decide if we want to side with the domesticated woman and be mothers and wives or boss-babe career women with unbridled ambition, resting bitch face, and financial freedom.

We’ve been told to lean in — and then back out. Articles have been written about why we can’t have it all but, frankly, we’re still struggling to have anything so we have to keep trying to have it all until something sticks.

And what’s happened is that, in these choppy waters, we’ve begun to drown.

In high school, I was discouraged from pursuing science because I was too emotional. (True story. A female science teacher thought I’d be a bad fit for advanced chemistry because I was too overwhelmed by all of the other advanced classes I was taking. I was overwhelmed because I had undiagnosed major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and obsessive compulsive tendencies, as well as an exercise addiction and an eating disorder. I might have been emotional, but I could have excelled in the class. So, I doubled down on English and History. To this day, I regret not pursuing science, because I wanted to work in genetics.)

I’ve ridden the rollercoaster of Trying to Get a Job while Female (TM). With my English degree, I’ve been a teacher, marketer, and quasi-journalist. I’ve been bullied and harassed by my male students. I’ve watched female executives drop out of the workforce to spend more time with their children because being a female VP means staying late at work to prove that you’re serious, having to be the note taker at meetings, and playing executive assistant to the CEO.

I’ve been paid so little that I have had to rely on first my parents and now my fiancé just to make ends meet — and been told by male bosses that I should be thanking them for my “high” wages. (I once had a CEO, who was paying me $30K in San Francisco, look me in the eyes and tell me, without a shred of sarcasm or apology, that I should move out of my mother’s house and closer to work so I wouldn’t have to commute for four hours every day. And for reference, the BARE MINIMUM you can make and “afford” to live in SF — the living wage — is $30,777. A second male boss insisted that I should be grateful for how much they were paying me, even though it was below market, and I had to take a 30% pay cut in order to work at that company doing a job with responsibilities comparable to a job that paid six figures.)

Which is why, when I discovered internet marketing, passive income, and online coaching, I sought to get the hell out.

The internet has opened up a whole new world of economic leverage previously inaccessible to a number of groups, and the pursuit of online money is not limited to women.

But the freedom number (the amount it takes to officially quit working for someone else and still support yourself) is specifically enticing to those of us who move throughout the world as “women.” Whether or not we’re aware of it, it offers something that the workforce cannot: the opportunity to “have it all.”

To be a #bossbabe or a #momtrepreneur or a #ladyboss, you define your own economic terms without having to rely on someone else telling you your worth (and making you thank them for it). You can stay home, raise children, and be domestic — and still have an empire. You can wear yoga pants and not have to prove yourself in a three-piece suit that shows *just* enough cleavage to make you interesting while still making yourself appear “respectable.”

You can be a functioning member of society and feel like you’re making a contribution in a way that working for a micromanaging boss never will.

Internet money should be a win for feminism; however, I’m concerned by the ways in which women in particular are still being exploited even while they earn:

Even as they seize more earning and spending power, women are doing so by centering their economic worth in their bodies.

Before going further, I want to make clear that there is no clear and reductive argument for or against using the internet to make a living; I can’t pretend, as a person who has struggled to find a career that both enriches me on a personal and developmental level and allows me to put money away for retirement or give consistently to others, that there’s currently a better alternative. What I would like to do instead is discuss the potential negative effects of a culture that forces women to rely on the internet for marketing, and suggest areas where we could improve for future generations. But we have to agree to start improving now, rather than waiting for future generations to figure it out on their own.

My generation is struggling with the holes left by the second wave of feminism’s “have it all” rhetoric. I don’t want our daughters and granddaughters to look back on the third wave or whatever the hell this “movement” is and say: They set us up for failure, too.

The Argument For: Why We Need Internet Marketing in the First Place

Before we talk about why women shouldn’t need to rely on internet marketing to make a living, we have to understand why they do rely on it in the first place.

Internet marketing takes many different forms, but the three that you’ll find most women participating in are: blogging, coaching, and direct marketing, the latter of which is also known as multilevel marketing or “MLM.” (Also, I’d like to acknowledge that direct marketing often takes place off the internet — think about Tupperware parties, sex toy parties, etc.; however, many of the direct marketing companies will provide resources to their sellers to create a “brand” presence online and recruit new followers and customers. I feel like it’s important to include this as a separate category from coaching, although some direct marketers will also brand themselves as “coaches,” such as Beachbody coaches.)

The first blogs were accidental business ventures. Women writing about their adventures in baking, running, and childrearing suddenly found themselves with hundreds and even thousands of readers, hanging upon their every word and leaving enthusiastic comments. With these huge — and highly engaged — audiences, it only made sense for advertisers to reach out. When a company sniffs out a business opportunity, they bite — blood in the water, and all. And when women, who were maybe looking for ways to make additional revenue or revenue in the first place, are suddenly presented with the prospect of making some cold hard cash for just showing up and being themselves, well…why wouldn’t they bite too?

This liberated women (granted, usually white, cis, hetero, and straight sized women) from the corporate system, gave them the option to stay home with their children while still contributing to the household, and provided an easy alternate revenue stream that was often better than waiting around for a bonus or a promotion that might never come.

In this sense, there’s a great argument for using the internet to make money: if all it takes is your face, a couple of carefully posed pictures, and some generic advice or a “useful” listicle to start a business and out-earn your counterparts who are working their less-toned butts off for “the man,” why wouldn’t you go all in?

Pick a passion, claim your expertise, and start selling. It’s much simpler than struggling to pay off student loans, living off food stamps because you can’t get a job that pays a living wage, or wishing you didn’t have to lose yourself in creating, marketing, or selling someone else’s product.

Since the early days described above, blogging has exploded into a big business, with “freedom coaches” “liberating” thousands of people from their drab day jobs and helping them make money with their passions.

The person becomes the passion becomes the brand — but that is where the problems begin to arise.

The Argument Against: Why Internet Marketing is a Problem

I would argue that any time something becomes a “big business,” it runs the risk of corruption or, at least, creating negative consequences. And blogging became a big business. If you go back into the history of blogging-as-business, you can watch the images getting better, posts getting “advice-ier,” and the product placements becoming as natural as natural light falling softly on a perfectly posed oatmeal in a jar.

Why is this a problem? Well:

Because, for the bloggers leveraging this newfound income stream (their audiences) showing up “authentically” online meant showing up in the ways that attracted an engaged and paying audiences. Bloggers began identifying harder and louder and in more targeted and specific ways with their online presences. Women with kitschy blog names suddenly became the kitschy blog name. They were the Pioneer Woman, Mama Pea, a Purely Twin. Their identities became the blogs, the blogs became their brands, and their brands became their identities. There was no separating them online.

Now. This isn’t a problem, necessarily, if these people entered into their brands with awareness and had the presence of mind to separate themselves (their identities and beliefs) from the source of their money. If they could say: I may change my mind, learn new information, or move on from this money-making venture. I believe in this now, I am an expert in this now, but I am not my business, I run my business.

Instead, the business runs them.

The internet is a visual place. How you present yourself — your personal brand — matters. Because people do not trust you if they do not identify with your brand.

Whether they are selling an image or an actual product related to their bodies, women are increasingly reliant upon looks in order to both establish a brand and register trustworthiness and identification with a potential audience. They are increasingly reliant upon showing up “authentically” by showing up in the first place.

And when those brands are tied to diet, weight, size, or fitness, or even just the behaviors and image of what makes a “good woman” (cis/hetero, white, straight-sized, good mother, sexy but not sexual, “empowered” but not shrill), it becomes incredibly enticing for those women to hold onto their beliefs — and dangerous for them to let go.

For example:

I know a nutrition blogger who has built her brand around optimizing her health through a certain way of eating and “natural” cures. When she optimized her health beyond what most people could ever do, she started looking for even weirder, more esoteric, and potentially dangerous things to “cure” so she could stay relevant. The minutiae of optimizing her existence keeps her audience engaged and purchasing affiliate products, but she is suffering from the anxiety of trying to make her health “perfect.”

I know a “healthy living blogger” who is actually an anorexic. Despite being confronted by her friends who went to treatment with her, this blogger continues to exercise and share calorie-restricted “healthy recipes” because she believes that she is helping people. She won’t come clean, quit the blog, and go into treatment again because it would destroy her brand and her ability to make money.

I know a Paleo blogger who is still selling weight loss even though she claims feminism as her worldview, because she has to make money — and using the words “weight loss” sells. She could just stop exploiting her audience’s vulnerabilities and fears, but then she would lose listeners, readers, and, ultimately, the revenue she needs to live.

I know women who run ultra marathons in sponsored clothing despite admitting to anorexia and exercise addiction, Crossfitters with Amazon affiliate accounts who can’t stop injuring themselves, people with the symptoms of hypothyroidism and chronic stomach pain who refuse to eat enough calories or cut down on exercise because they are “healthier” (read: thinner) and get more “likes” when they partake in their behaviors and post them online.

There is capital in your personal brand. That much is very clear. If your brand is clearly defined, “authentically” presented, and built on your identity, you’ll attract a clearly-defined audience that identifies with you. You’ll get the social capital (likes and follows) and the financial capital (program/product sales, affiliate deals, sponsorships) that liberate you from the pain and drudgery that is working on something you hate, for someone you hate, for less than you’re worth, and away from your family.

So how is this not feminist?

The issue is not that people who follow this path are earning money through a different system — that is feminist. Breaking the mold of corporate capitalism and earning what you’re worth, setting your own prices, hours, and boundaries is absolutely an act of feminism.

But the ways in which we are forced to rely on our image is firmly anti-feminist. How well we visually conform to expectations, whether or not we’re actively losing weight or keeping it off, whether or not we’re performing “woman” or “wellness” or whatever it is we’re selling — well, we’re still using our bodies as the main selling point for our product.

Sure — we’re not being sold as the product; we’re the ones doing the selling. But we — our bodies — are still the product. Whether we’re being gazed at or presenting ourselves for the gaze, we are still participating in the objectification of our bodies.

And worse: when that objectification makes us money, we hold even tighter and faster to that objectification. When presented with information that contradicts our belief systems (being thinner doesn’t necessarily make you healthier, obsessive exercise and not the standard American diet is destroying your hormones, cyclic dieting in order to sell your multilevel marketing product is worse for your health than gaining back those five pounds you had in the first place, etc.), we balk.

You can’t just rebrand and hope for the best, especially when rebranding means admitting that your behaviors were damaging the people you were trying to help. Look what happened to Jordan Younger, formerly the Blonde Vegan, when she admitted that she was using veganism like an eating disorder: she got death threats, and, perhaps worse for her in terms of tangible damage, people left her audience in droves and asked for their money back for the products she sold.

Your body is NOT your brand. Yes, it allows you to have it “all,” but that “all” comes with chronic dieting, anxiety about health and wellness, a fetishization of your own image, and the commodification of your beliefs. Is that a price that you’re willing to pay? If so, ask yourself why. The system we live in is completely screwed up if we have to be willing to stay objects in order to pay the bills.

When we rent out our belief systems, identities, and bodies to the highest bidder, our income is no more feminist than the incomes of the desk jockeys making less than their male coworkers. It’s just that the ways in which the money isn’t feminist are different.

We need to find a system that allows us to participate in capitalism without centering our bodies in the product, service, or brand. We need to find a way to deconstruct the idea that beauty, physical attraction, and conformity are the best ways to build, represent, and strengthen a brand. We need to find ways to decenter heterosexual, cis-presenting, light-skinned, straight-sized femininity from the narrative of who makes money (and, in doing so, also decentering similar narratives in the plus size/body positive community as well).

I don’t have all the answers to this dilemma — but I think it’s safe to start by raising the questions. How do we participate in capitalism without perpetuating an anti-feminist narrative of objectification? How do we run a business without becoming the business? Can we stop asking the world to consume us so we can afford to be consumers too?

]]>http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/08/13/internet-marketing-not-feminist/feed/2Unpopular Opinion: I’m Just Not That into Health Coachinghttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/05/21/therapy-not-health-coaching/
http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/05/21/therapy-not-health-coaching/#commentsMon, 22 May 2017 02:36:56 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5749The more I think about it, the more I dislike the idea of health coaching. Please read this post with the caveat that I just spent the last five or so years of my life trying to become a health coach, spending multiple thousands of dollars on training and business building investments, and truly believing […]

]]>The more I think about it, the more I dislike the idea of health coaching. Please read this post with the caveat that I just spent the last five or so years of my life trying to become a health coach, spending multiple thousands of dollars on training and business building investments, and truly believing in the power and the purpose of my chosen side hustle. I’m also friends with and advocate for several amazing health coaches who are doing great work and who I will continue to stand behind, since this is not just their chosen profession, but something that’s helping people out in the world. With that in mind, however…onward:

I recently restarted therapy. I’ve always been resistant to therapy — preferring instead to read blogs and books by people going through the same struggles I was (coaches and internet personalities), over having to talk to an impenetrable wall of a person about my issues (therapists). Maybe that impulse is the result of wasting money on a series of bad therapists who seemed to make things worse or maybe it was the result of being raised in a culture that normalized LiveJournal angst and Facebook confessionals. I don’t know.

But I decided to see a therapist…rather than drop another grand or two on a coach who thinks that all of my problems can be solved by reading their ebook and following their X-step formula, which is based on the way they solved their own problem, and my failure to get out of my funk is just a failure to change my mindset to match theirs.

When I went searching for a therapist, I did so deliberately, after five years of basically saying that therapy is important (for legal reasons) but not actually believing it. I became a health coach (even though I stopped calling myself one) for a reason: I thought that the reason that therapy kind of sucked was that there was no way for my therapist to relate to me because they had not lived through the same experiences.

Health/wellness/body image coaching is an interesting thing. It’s grown in popularity for the same reason that Facebook support groups are such a hot place to be right now: we’re all looking to feel seen and heard and like we’re not alone. We’re looking to find other people who are just like us — but a few steps ahead. People to whom we can relate and learn from.

This is why everyone can be an expert on social media: all you need is a body and a problem, and — voila! — you have your brand.

I hated my body and then I learned how to do burpees and got a six pack. Great. Now you can say you’re an expert in using fitness to “love your body.”*

I hated my body and then I started wearing crop tops anyway. Great. Now you’re an expert in fat acceptance and/or body positivity.**

I didn’t know how to use a camera and then I did an unboxing video and now I do more of those and sometimes also take pictures. Great. Now you’re a photography expert with a thriving amazon affiliate program.

I had acne and then I washed my face with coconut oil and now I don’t have acne. Fabulous. You’re an expert in “female” hormones.

Etc.

This was me. I became an “expert” in Paleo eating disorder recovery and exercise addiction, because I ate Paleo for a few months and hated my body a little less.

People came to trust me, not because I had studied any therapeutic modalities, but because I was figuring out recovery in a very public way that resonated with other people who looked/ate/exercised like me.

I became a coach because I wanted to share my own personal experience as a way to help other people, who, like me, didn’t trust therapists and wanted someone to tell them how to eat and exercise and supplement to fix themselves.

The more I learn about the ways in which the Internet works, however — the longer I sit here and watch people become coaches become brands and build tribes of faithful followers and recurring revenue streams — the less I feel like coaching is necessarily the right thing for everyone.

I will caveat by saying: I know some coaches who are great at separating themselves from their brands and who are doing good work and are kicking people out of the nest and forcing them to grow, so this is not a universal take-down of all coaching in the universe ever, okay? Everyone take a deep breath and calm down before I go on. … Done? Okay:

The problem with turning your pain into expertise and selling it is that, even after you’ve healed, you have to remain in touch with your pain in order to remain authentic and continue selling. (I’ve written about this before, but I have to say it again.)

Brand-ifying your story helps solidify your messaging, and your messaging has to remain consistent in order to attract your ideal client. So, in order to sell, you have to continue sharing your pain and your healing — variations on a theme. You have to remain in your “expertise” if you want people to find and come to know, like, and trust you.

At the same time, the tribe you build traps people in their stories as well. When we find people who hurt like us, who experience life the way we do, we tend to form bonds with them. The internet has given us the ability to find people who struggle with their bodies the way we do, our mental health the way we do, our physical ailments the way we do. We become friends because we eat the same way, have tried the same supplements, have experienced the same traumas, or are going through the same struggles.

But what happens when you heal? Well…you have to leave the tribe. You can’t relate anymore. Just like a coach who has to keep on writing about their trauma to keep you in their sales funnel, if you want people to continue to relate to you, you have to stay in your hurt, at least a little bit.

Or, better yet, you can become a coach yourself. Because if you’ve healed but still want to stay relatable, you can share your story and become your own expert, expanding your tribe while capitalizing on the one that helped heal you.

So we voluntarily stay trapped in a sales funnel because god forbid we miss another podcast or summit with the same seven “experts” talking about the same seven topics over again. FOMO becomes a threat to your friendships, your community, and even your ability to make money.

At the same time…I get it. There are a lot of bad therapists out there. There are a lot of people who bring their own shit to the table — who got their license, but are just as disordered or messed up as their patients. There are also lots of therapists who are good, but just not for you. That’s why therapist shopping is so frustrating. And also so important.

So of course coaching seems like the better alternative. A quick Google search or a scan through the health and wellness section of the Podcasts app, and you’ve found “the answer” to all of your problems. I just need an inspirational story, a personal framework built on the struggles of someone who’s been there, and the experience backed by social proof.

But let me offer a counterpoint.

When I started therapy, I did so knowing almost nothing about my therapist. I found her via referral, so I haven’t read her blog posts, listened to her podcasts, or watched her youtube videos. Also: she doesn’t have any of those things.

I don’t know anything about her story. I don’t know if she became a therapist because of her own unresolved traumas, I don’t know if her diet or supplements changed her life. In our sessions, she doesn’t talk about herself, her story, or her other clients’ successes. She doesn’t frame suggestions based on her own point of view or experience.

Instead, she listens, she asks questions, she guides my process, and I leave, having made a little progress.

I don’t want to be on her email list. I don’t want to be her friend. I want to be able to work through my traumas and leave and not get updates from her or the other people who are working with her at all hours of the day and night. I don’t want to read articles that keep me engaged in my quest to feel better when I’m not actively working with her. I don’t want to stay where I am in order to remain in her Facebook group.

I want to do the work and be done.

I do not want trauma to be my brand or my tribe. I want it to have an end point, not a monetization strategy.

I get the appeal of working with coaches. I get the appeal of being one. I also see the value of working with someone who “gets” you because they’ve been where you are. But the more I understand the ways in which the internet encourages us to make our traumas into our expertise into our brands, the less I want to be involved.

Seeking coaches is, at the end of the day, seeking confirmation bias. As a coach, a marketer, I write and speak in a certain way, because I have a certain type of audience in mind (a persona). You, as my potential client, read or hear that speech and recognize that it’s a signal to you. Whatever you’re seeking, you’ll find it, and you’ll stay in it.

There’s also a darker angle to this argument: while there are many health coaches who have personal experience with having eating disorders, there is no regulated training for said coaches to help others recover from eating disorders. Often, I see people with very active and very dangerous eating disorders gravitate toward “body positive” groups, where they can get validation for their pain, but the coaches and Facebook group moderators aren’t trained to guide them to and through recovery. Because of confirmation bias, people with eating disorders feel that all they need to recover is a body positive meme or two, a few Facebook live sessions, and a string of inspirational podcasts to keep them entertained with the idea of recovery.

And while for some people that’s enough (I recovered without immersive therapy, so I will not be reductive and say that everyone needs intensive treatment and an intervention), it puts many in a dangerous position: the person with the eating disorder may not get the help they need to fully recover or even start to recover, and the coach may end up dealing with legal or emotional backlash from a “patient” who shouldn’t have been a client.

I’ll tell you a quick story, and then you can go and write your angry takedown of this post:

When I went seeking a therapist, I was turned down by about four different people (because I could not afford them, because they were too far away, because they were booked until August), before I was referred to my current therapist.

When I sat down for our consultation and told her my story and why I needed her help, she was very frank with me: I am not her ideal client. In fact, she informed me, she didn’t want to waste my time by working with me.

Her method, Internal Family Systems, requires that a person be different from the kind of person I am — my energy is too kinetic, I’m too high-strung, too skeptical and angry.

I told her that I understood. And that I wanted to work with her anyway.

It’s been the most productive therapy I’ve ever had.

Why?

Because I have spent the last, what, six years or so finding what I was looking for and being disappointed by it. So this time, I went with something that I wasn’t looking for at all, because it forced me to get out of my own head and do the damn work.

I’m not going to tell you to stop coaching or being coached. I know there are people out there who are getting immense benefit from it, spiritually, emotionally, and monetarily.

But I’m personally done for now. I’m going to recommend therapy in earnest and not just because I legally have to.

Go off brand. See what changes for you.

*This only works if you believe that “loving your body” is predicated on changing it.

**And, thanks to the internet, this is even if you know nothing about intersectional feminist theory, the history of the fat acceptance movement, the people who pioneered fat acceptance, or how to stop triggering other people online by talking about why you should still probably diet.

]]>http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/05/21/therapy-not-health-coaching/feed/6A 5-Day Social Media Authenticity Challenge for Humans Who Are Tired of Being Brandshttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/05/09/social-media-authenticity/
Tue, 09 May 2017 12:25:06 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5710 “The communication that is most nearly real, that involves the person by making I’m almost a part of it, has the greatest power to sway him.” – Philip Lesly, The People Factor: Managing the Human Climate [emphasis mine] I’m tired of “authenticity” on the Internet. I’ve been tired of it for a long time, but […]

Because, in those last six years, I’ve seen how people have become mesmerized by marketing — we’ve all become our own public-relations-machines, our own Brands.

Brands are not people, nor are people Brands. But ask any Forbes article about the “power of personal brand” or attend any webinar given by a self-proclaimed digital marketing guru, and you’ll be told the opposite.

A Brand is a corporate entity. It tells people how they should react to a business, what a business is about. It is a corporate message, which signals to people how they should buy, and who the product or services are for.

And yet, here we are: we’re all Brands now.

Social media has made it incredibly easy to have a Message and get hundreds or thousands of eyes on it. For those who know how to masterfully manipulate marketing psychology, Brand and Message turn easily into Sales.

The only thing is, Brands are not people, and people are not Brands — and people often do not trust Brands, because Brands seek to separate people from their money.

So how do you solve for the lack of trust? Why, you make sure to show your audience your “authenticity!”

Reminder: If you have to call what you do “authenticity,” it’s probably not very authentic.

Once people know that you’re “real,” that you’re not perfect, that you’re “just like them,” well, then the guards come down. They “know, like, and trust” you — you, who have become a Brand, but have been masquerading as an “authentic” person.

The thing is: if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you really are a person. You’ve resigned yourself to (or maybe actually are excited about) becoming a Brand, because this is what you do to make money in the world today. Maybe you’ve been marginalized, and this allows you to amplify your voice for the first time; maybe you’ve been forced out of the 9-5 workforce because you dared to have a child and, even more daring, you decided you wanted to be a part of that child’s formative years; maybe you’re just sick of sitting at a desk and stifling your own creativity by listening to your boss tell you how to create and sell someone else’s corporate entity.

Whatever it is, you’re a person who needs to be a Brand. You’re on the internet because you have something special to sell, and you need people to actually purchase that something special so that you can do crazy things like…eat and pay rent, or even deign to live a life that is not uncomfortable.

The trouble is, you’ve been staging your authenticity. Especially if you’re in the body image world, where you have to show your fans and followers how you navigate a world that is constantly telling you that your body is too much, your authenticity is becoming…repetitive. Performative. Stale.

However, it’s also what works.

Just look at any viral body image account, and you’ll see (mostly-cis-) women cradling their fat rolls, showing off their cellulite, and giving passionate Instagram storied accounts of how they have period bloat and acne and that’s okay.

Which…is okay.

But it’s a performance. To get other people to see that they do body image work.

Thanks for the advice on authenticity, Google!

Which is also okay.

Because it helps those people to see that progress is doable, that freedom from self-hate is not a myth, and that recovery — from any body image issue or eating disorder, even — is possible.

But.

For the person behind the lens and the keyboard — you — it is exhausting. And after a while, the authenticity begins to feel inauthentic. Because it’s planned authenticity. Because it’s “on message.” Because you’ve already moved on, but you’re stuck saying the same things over and over again in the hopes that someone will tag someone else, and you’ll get one more “YASSSSS QUEEN” comment that might open the marketing funnel and lead to a sale.

If this is your chosen profession, there’s not much you can do about it. Until we figure out a way to shut down the internet or make social media a brand-free zone like it was in 2007, I can’t tell you how to stop selling your authenticity.

However.

I do think you deserve to spend time on social media just being YOU. The person — the HUMAN — not the Brand.

Which means not having to take transformation photos of you thin and fat (to show either how going on a diet/embracing fitness made you happier OR how stopping dieting helped you embrace your body), side-by-side comparisons of you standing up straight and you slouching (to show how deceptive photos can be), “I woke up like this” and “makeup-free” selfies (to show that you’re a real person who doesn’t need to wear makeup to be happy), etc.

Those things are important for gaining followers and prospects — I totally get it. And if it’s working for you and you need it in order to eat, then don’t stop.

But I do think that, sometimes, it’s also important to remember your life outside of your Brand.

Real authenticity, where the INTENT isn’t tied to follower count and doesn’t lead to a sales page.

So: In the spirit of using Branded social media to flip Branded social media on its head, I propose an X-day social media re-HUMAN yourself challenge. During these X days, you DON’T have to give up your brand or your selling if you don’t want to. Just complete the challenges in tandem with what you’re already doing. Just so you can remember how it feels to not be a Brand once in a while.

After you complete the challenge, you can go back and do any of the challenges any day and any time. Because you are also a human, and you’re allowed to not be a Brand all of the time.

And yes, I am sometimes a Brand. Yes, I am a marketer. But I am also a person, and I’m trying to spend more of my time re-humanizing my feeds so that I can reduce my own anxiety, calm the hustle, and reconnect with the person who I am offline.

So…wanna try it? You have no obligation to complete all of the challenges, but you may be surprised at how much less stress about the hustle you’ll feel when you do.

]]>An Open Letter to Dieters from a Recovered Anorexic on International No-Diet Dayhttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/05/06/open-letter-dieters-recovered-anorexic-international-no-diet-day/
Sat, 06 May 2017 15:54:22 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5718Dear Dieter, It’s International No-Diet Day, and, as a recovered EDNOS/anorexic and exercise addict, I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you, the dieter. About your FitBit. And your calorie count. And your 30-day meal plan. And the size-too-small pants you’ve hung in the front of your closet for motivation. Dieting for weight […]

It’s International No-Diet Day, and, as a recovered EDNOS/anorexic and exercise addict, I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you, the dieter.

About your FitBit.

And your calorie count.

And your 30-day meal plan.

And the size-too-small pants you’ve hung in the front of your closet for motivation.

Dieting for weight loss/weight suppression is disordered eating.

Full stop.

It may not seem like it is, because you do not have the mental health disorder “eating disorder,” but it is still disordered eating.

When people hear that I had an eating disorder, they probably assume that it was anorexia nervosa, and that it mapped to their assumptions about what anorexia looks like. (I’m not going to describe it because *trigger warning*, but also — you know.)

However, for about ten years, no one had any idea that I had an eating disorder, because I was behaving so healthily.

I ate (healthy) meals and (healthy) snacks. I worked out. I watched my portion sizes. I politely declined dessert or only took one taste. I stayed out with friends all night and still made it to the gym by six am. I followed the advice in the magazines about good calories, bad calories, and clean and cleaner foods. I looked like I might someday belong on the cover of one of those magazines, if only I could get my boobs done.

Those are all things that you may be doing right now. To motivate yourself. To chastise yourself. To “help” yourself — to stay or become thinner.

And that is also why I did those things: to stay/become thinner.

You may be saying (as I’ve had people say to be before), “But, Kaila, you had an eating disorder. You’re just projecting your problems onto my behaviors. That’s like an alcoholic walking into a bar and calling everyone inside alcoholics too.”

And to that I say, “Fair — except you’re not just copying my behaviors. You’re also copying my mindset.”

The reasons that an alcoholic drinks are not because of the alcohol. Sure, that’s their poison of choice, but it’s never just about the drink. It’s about the mindset: There is something wrong in my life, and I don’t know how to cope with it, so I’ll put the bandaid over it by obliterating my memory for the evening.

They can’t ever enjoy a drink, like a non-alcoholic can, because, while non-alcoholics may drink to cover their pain for a night, their mindset is not constantly, unendingly: I am broken, and this will fix it.

Both the eating disordered person and your average dieter believe that they are broken. They believe that their behaviors — the dieting, the counting, the depriving, the exercising, etc. — will fix it.

Sure, the dieter can stop the behaviors any time they want — as I’m constantly reminded when people hear that I’m a recovered anorexic and exercise addict: “Oh, I wish I had the willpower to be an anorexic/exercise addict!” It’s not a funny joke. Ever. Just in case you were thinking of making it.

But the dieter doesn’t stop the mindset any less than a person with an eating disorder does. It’s just that eating disordered people often have the complication of almost (or actual) obsessive-compulsive needs to keep going further.

But our society…it’s taught all of us to want to keep going further. It’s taught us, with our counters, our tallies, our gamification, our social shares, our #transformationtuesday photos, our office weight loss challenges, to feel the same tug at the back of our brains: I can’t stop now…I’m still broken.

And, yes, I know that, in eating disorders, the “weight loss” is never about the weight loss…but it’s the same in dieting. We’re never “just” dieting for weight loss. We’re dieting to fix the problems — relationships, career, friendships, parents, fear of failure, fear of success, depression, stagnation, confusion, you name it. We believe that we can’t fix those problems by fixing those problems. We have been taught that the only thing that fixes those problems is “starting over on Monday” and showing up with a “revenge body” on weigh-in day.

I know you think that what you’re doing is fine. I know that the measuring tape around your waist is “just” for “motivation.” I know you pin #fitspo on Pinterest and wear your FitBit because you “just” need a reminder to move. I know you think that the next sugar cleanse is going to the be a short-term thing, and it will be the one that finally heals you, inside and out.

But the mindset behind what you’re doing is exactly the same as mine. The one that played on a loop in my head for ten years before anyone noticed that, actually, what I was doing wasn’t healthy.

I can’t tell you to get out of the bar and put down the pint. But, if you’re still thinking that more weight loss behaviors are the answer, then you’ve got a problem, and more poison won’t cure it.

Both dieting and eating disorders are a mind(set) problem. And you shouldn’t need an “international no diet day” to remind you that it’s time to fix it.

Love,

Kaila

]]>UNPOPULAR OPINION: You’re Not Body Positive, So Stop Using That Labelhttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/02/27/not-body-positive-label/
Mon, 27 Feb 2017 20:04:28 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5647Warning: Unpopular opinion ahead. I hesitate to publish this, because the source that I’m about to write about gets it right some of the time, and I consider some of the writers acquaintances — whose work I have respected. However — and however much it pains me to write this — recklessness has to be […]

I hesitate to publish this, because the source that I’m about to write about gets it right some of the time, and I consider some of the writers acquaintances — whose work I have respected.

However — and however much it pains me to write this — recklessness has to be called out, no matter who is perpetrating it, and maybe even doubly so if it’s someone whose work is closely enough aligned with your own that you might be sharing an audience.

So here goes:

The other day, a writer for a publication that has a huge reach in the fitness and body image world sent out a tweet that said (and I’m paraphrasing for relative anonymity):

“Here’s a body-positive, evidence-based post to help you reach your goals. [emphasis mine]”

And it linked out to a blog post that was essentially about how to weight train for fat loss.

Okay.

So.

Body positive…fat loss…goals.

Body…positive…fat…loss…goals.

That’s not a thing. It’s impossible to advocate for body positivity and changing your body in the same breath.

This wasn’t the only transgression like this I’ve seen. It’s becoming clearer and clearer every day that body positivity has lost its meaning.

Like “feminism,” body positivity has been co-opted by anyone and everyone with a product to sell to you.

The term “body positivity,”for a little history lesson, was coined (at least as we know it) in 1996 — which is a surprisingly short time ago. It was part of a “feel good” project about learning to accept and love your bodies, with the goal of helping people become “liberated from self-hatred, value their beauty and identity, and use their energy and intellect to make positive changes in their own lives and in their communities.”

The coaching, workshops, teaching, etc. (because that’s essentially what thebodypositive.org does) are based on experience in eating disorder recovery, and they are meant to help recovered or recovering people “focus on changing the world, not their bodies.”

Before I go on, let’s keep this phrase in your mind: “changing the world and not [your body].”

Body positivity was not necessarily a political movement, nor was it a consumerist movement meant for T-shirts and soap campaigns. It was…for eating disorder recovery/prevention. And it was expanded to the public at large because, let’s face it: We could all stand to do a little more changing of the world and not our bodies. The movement became political as it entwined with the fat positive/fat acceptance movement, and then it shifted into the consumer realm, well, because capitalism.

As a result, “body positive” moved past clinical eating disorder awareness and into the language of liberation. It became a tool for “empowerment” first for fat bodies and then for anyone willing to buy the T-shirt.

But with that definition (changing the world and not your body), it’s possible that “body positivity” is actually a misnomer: “Positivity” suggests that anything you do to “feel positive” about your body falls in line with the goals of body positivity as a practice. However, the culture in which you and I live, is one that dictates that you “will” feel more positive about your body if you lose weight/exercise more/restrict your food/be “healthy.”

Feeling positive about reaching specific societally accepted goals (like losing fat on purpose) is not the same thing as loving yourself unconditionally — because “losing fat” is literally a condition that you’re trying to meet. Yet there are people who will argue, with a straight face, that being thinner makes them feel good about themselves, so therefore it is body positive — even in the presence of the argument that cultural dictates about body size have more to do with keeping the diet and fashion industries flush with money than they do about health or worth.

In the face of that argument, I believe that body positivity should be refocused as or renamed “body acceptance.” Body acceptance gets more to the point than body positivity does, and leaves less ambiguity: It becomes about taking care of your body regardless of what it looks like on the outside. It’s not about “giving up on yourself” or “letting yourself go,” but accepting, in real time, that your features are yours, and nourishing yourself regardless of how you feel (or how culture has primed you to feel) about them — or how you wish they looked.

But, unfortunately, body acceptance doesn’t sell the way body positivity does, because body positivity still leaves the door open to your personal interpretation of what will make you feel positive. Yet that semblance of “choice” is what makes the label “body positive” so easy to misuse.

Body positivity started with a noble goal, but, unfortunately, due to both semantics and marketing, it isn’t currently achieving said goal, at least on a culturally pervasive level.

Body positivity, as we know it today, is now sometimes about loving and accepting your body, but also about selling soap and tampons and fitness plans and weight loss shakes.

Recently, I stopped writing and podcasting about body positivity, because, frankly, we don’t need more writing about body positivity. What we need is more awareness about the ways in which the term “body positivity” is being co-opted to market and sell youproducts that reinforce the notion that you and your body are not good enough.

So let’s get back to this post I saw on Twitter.

It’s a post about specifically using some scientific evidence about fat loss and strength training to force an expected outcome on the size and/or shape of your body.

So let’s make something very, very, ridiculously clear:

Having a goal for losing fat is not body positive.

Period.

That is literally the opposite of the definition of body positive. Fat loss goals are literally about changing your body. By definition, the two are diametrically opposed.

That doesn’t mean to suggest that body positivity means that you can’t take care of yourself. That doesn’t mean that you can’t exercise or eat healthily or take medicine or get sleep or do things thatend up maybe changing your body (or maybe not). That doesn’t mean that you can’t strength train or have goals around fitness.

But what it DOES mean is that if you have a defined goal of changing your body, and you plan to use the “evidence” to reach that goal, that is inherently not body positive.

You can certainly have goals around strength training that involve lifting more weight or reps, but it is not body positive to make losing weight the focus of the activity. (i.e. “I want to lift 10 more pounds,” not “I want to lose 10 more pounds.”)

I don’t care if you’re not being body positive in your post. (Okay, actually I do care, but let me make my point.) What I care about is the use of the words “body positive” if you’re not being body positive. I shouldn’t have to explain this, but: Don’t use the words “body positive” in a post that is inherently not about body positivity.

I know that you have to appeal to the body positive feminists in your readership to get clicks, because that’s what the cultural zeitgeist says to do, but if your post isn’t about body positivity…then don’t use the phrase in your marketing of whatever worldview that you are writing about.

Conscious, targeted, “evidence-based” fat loss isn’t body positive. That’s okay, if that’s the thing you believe in and are writing about, but don’t try to fool yourself (or your readers) by just slapping a label on whatever you’re writing about just because you want it to be body positive.

Wanting something to be body positive doesn’t make it body positive. Choosing to believe it’s body positive doesn’t make it body positive. This is not about your individual choice — you don’t get to decide to change the definition of the movement, just because it suits your economic or social goals.

Just because you describe yourself as a body positive feminist doesn’t mean you actually are one. The ultimate test of that description comes not from how you self-identify, but from your words and actions.

In We Were Feminists Once by Andi Zeisler, she speaks about how the language of “empowerment” and “feminism” have been completely co-opted and manipulated because of the idea that “every choice can be a feminist one so long as a feminist (even a momentary one) is doing the choosing.

It’s the same thing with body positivity. Just because you say, “I choose this for my body, and I feel positive about it, so therefore my choice is a positive one,” doesn’t actually make you body positive.

In Zeisler’s book, she discusses what she calls “marketplace feminism,” which includes marketplace body positivity. I’ll let her say it in her own words:

“The business of marketing and selling to women literally depends on creating and then addressing female insecurity […] There was good reason for industries that sustained themselves on the self-hatred of women to dread the potential reach of feminist movements. Co-opting the language of liberation to sell their products allowed them to have it both ways, celebrating the spirit of the movement while fostering a new set of insecurities (“Natural-look” cosmetics, anyone?) and a new aspirational archetype.”

That is literally the same thing that’s happening in the body positive movement. In order to sell you a fitness program, rather than teaching you how to liberate yourself from body image obsession and fat loss goals, this writer (and all of the people who have written similar posts to sell similar lifestyles that lead to product and service purchases) turns to the language of oppression (“Your body isn’t good enough; it’s too fat!”) and couches it in the language of liberation (“But here’s a body positive approach to fixing it!”) in order to get you, the body positive feminist, to click, follow, and buy.

Strength training is not, inherently anti-body positive. The language with which this writer was discussing ts purpose is the problem. Strength training does not inherently lead to fat loss; strength training with “evidence” to specifically lose fat is the issue.

I understand that the immediate reaction to a post like this is to get defensive, but understand that I’m not calling out this writer as the only perpetrator of this type of co-opting of language, nor am I suggesting that she is doing so maliciously; she, like most of us, is affected by a larger cultural shift toward Zeisler’s description of “marketplace feminism,” and may not even realize that this is what she’s doing.

As Zeisler says, “[t]he further into the marketplace ‘choice’ has moved, the more it has become a nebulous designation. […] The use of ‘choice’ to rationalize individual choices—and, perhaps more important, to signify that criticizing those choices is unfeminist—isn’t unethical or amoral so much as it is underachieving.”

If you want to be body positive for real, messaging matter. And if you are a strength coach who wants to “empower” your clients to stop obsessing about their bodies, talking about fat loss, even if that’s the thing that your clients think they want or you think they should be able to choose, is not going to fix the problem. If you truly want to “empower” your clients, then become aware of your language and consciously change it.

Or, if you do think that evidence-based fat loss goals are a valid choice for your clients, then just call them what they are: fat loss goals. Own it.Do not use the language of body positivity to influence someone’s purchase while muddying the meaning of that language in the first place.

Your language matters. Make the conscious choice to do better.

TL;DR: A blog post about evidence-based fat loss isn’t body positive, even if the writer describes herself as a body positive feminist.

]]>I hate your brand.http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/02/19/i-hate-your-brand/
http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/02/19/i-hate-your-brand/#commentsSun, 19 Feb 2017 17:18:32 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5635I hate your fucking brand. I hate it. I think the whole idea that you, as a person, are reducible to 140 characters and a color palette is ridiculous. And that, somehow, your personhood is not only representative of one specific aspect of the entire world, and that said aspect is monetizable. I hate that […]

I think the whole idea that you, as a person, are reducible to 140 characters and a color palette is ridiculous. And that, somehow, your personhood is not only representative of one specific aspect of the entire world, and that said aspect is monetizable.

I hate that personal brand makes you less of a person.

I hate that you followed an online marketer and were “influenced by” their message so much so that you wholly consumed it and are now putting it back out into the world as yours because some bullshit business coach told you that, even though everyone else is already saying it, no one is saying it quite like you.

I hate that you have to hashtag and “@“ every pieces of clothing and makeup that you wear, because being an affiliate or a salesperson or a direct marketer is the only way you can make ends meet. I hate that you feel like this is your best avenue for making money, and I hate that we live in a world where this behavior is not only encouraged, but also necessitated by the fact that nothing is affordable anymore.

I hate that you believe your own bullshit about the product/cleanse/coaching package you’re shilling being healthy because if you don’t, you won’t be able to sell it.

I hate that you have to seek out people who like hashtags similar to yours and go onto their profiles and leave them vague kissy-face emojis or generic “wow” and “this is interesting” comments to get them to follow you back.

I hate that you get up in arms when I call you out on bullshit like that. I hate that you literally came onto my personal profile and got pissed when I told you to fuck off with your brand-building nonsense in my personal space. I hate that you think that’s normal and acceptable because you read about it on a business building blog or your business coach told you it’s the best way to get followers. It doesn’t bother me because I know better than to follow you back. It bothers me for the sake of the people who don’t know any different.

I hate that you have to take pictures of your food to be loved and accepted, and that you describe yourself as “a food blogger” even though your page is an endless parade of liquids and oatmeal in mason jars.

I hate that as soon as you follow a new diet (yes, Paleo/vegan/elimination/Whole30/engine 2, etc. is a diet) you become an expert in it.

I hate that you have “a following” and that pleasing them and the algorithm that attracts them is more important than spending time offline or posting about things that show me you’re a fully rounded person, not a series of products and services.

I hate that Instagram has started pushing you to identify as a business, like it started pushing me. And I hate that you clicked “yes.”

I hate that the phrases “boss babe” and “momtreprenuer” exist, and I hate that you use them.

I hate that you don’t know what empowerment actually means, and that all of your branding includes that word in gold script on a minimalist background because your target market is middle class white women.

I hate that you can’t be an activist because activists don’t make money, and in order to “self-care,” you have to have money — which means selling to women who have an expendable income (and usually a lot more privilege than the people who need your help).

I hate that ever third post of yours involves a vague “empowerment” quote because it gets you more followers and helps you “curate” your Instagram better.

I hate that you have to perform vulnerability for me. I hate that you posted a picture of yourself crying or pinching your “fat” or pointing out your acne or featuring your cellulite, because it’s been done before and you saw someone else get a million “yaaaasss queen” comments so you did it too.

I hate that you built your brand on trauma and that you have to keep picking at the wounds in order to stay relevant and interesting to your audience. I hate that we’re required to maintain audiences to validate our traumas now.

I hate that you were so “influenced” by my writing and the writing of other people that you felt like it was yours to write about without attribution.

I hate that you don’t know how to leverage marketing psychology in an ethical way, because the only marketing psychology you’ve been taught is aimed at making you the greatest profit. I hate that there are whole blogs written about how to push people through your funnel without discussing whether or not the way you are influencing people to buy from you is ethical.

I hate that you don’t know that the origins of this online money-making culture is rooted in white, male privilege. And I hate that you haven’t read Propaganda or Influence, or, if you have, that you don’t see anything wrong with looking at the world like a separation of business and consumer, influencer and influenced.

I hate that corporate america is such a fucking joke for so many people that you had to get out of the cubicle farm, and this was the way out. I hate that you were overworked and underpaid, and that your legacy will now be selling leggings over facebook.

I hate that second wave feminism failed you by telling you that you could have it all, and that “lean in” culture was created. I hate that mommy bloggers made you feel bad for not being at home enough with your kids and that your company thinks it’s completely acceptable to email you regularly after hours. I hate that the only way to feel economically viable and less vulnerable when you do choose to be a stay at home mom is to become a momtrepreneur and sell people the shakes that got you your post-baby body. I hate that even women who don’t have children still make $0.70 on the dollar and aren’t taught how to negotiate or ask for their worth or speak up and over men in meetings when it’s necessary or stop apologizing for things they didn’t do — and therefore feel like they need to get out of the workforce and start selling stick-on nail polish.

I hate that this generation, and the generations that follow, was brought up on marketing and advertising, and that we literally have been trained to buy things our entire lives, so much so that when our buy triggers are hit, we blindly follow them. I hate that you have been trained to hit my buy triggers.

I hate that the only people who can actually make money online end up selling their bodies (or the images of their bodies) in one way or another — and that they’re not doing it with self-awareness.*

I hate that you get defensive when I tell you that you’re not a brand, because the second you’re not a brand, you feel like you can’t make money. I hate that we live in a world where you’re probably right about that.

I hate that change doesn’t happen until we all decide to change, and that no one wants to be the first person to say “I am not a brand, and I still deserve to be paid for my work/my art/my valuable contributions to society,” because being first is a risk with terrible odds.

I hate that you have a business coach who got started by working with a business coach. I hate that the people who make the most money online, after the people selling weight loss, are the marketers marketing to marketers. I hate that you think your entrepreneur-interview podcast is interesting and different. It’s not.

I hate that you built your following by selling them weight loss or fitness and then got woke, listened to people with smaller followings, and used their words to “influence” your writing and transformation without crediting them. I hate that you make money through plagiarism, but don’t even realize that’s what you’re doing.

I hate that I’m scared to write this post for you, because I know that you’re going to get mad at me, and also, because I need to be a brand too. I hate that I feel like the internet is my best bet for making a living. I hate that without that brand, my life is answering emails and putting out completely unnecessary marketing “fire drills.” I hate that art and activism aren’t heralded as important enough to seek out on your own; I hate that you have to be influenced to care about either, if you do at all. I hate that I have to think about using the marketing psychology I despise, and make the choice between using it and making money or not using it and continuing to bitterly stare at an empty bank account and hours and hours and hours of writing that won’t get read. I hate that brand is more important than personality and that, without a brand, you see me as just another cog in someone else’s wheel — if you see me at all.

And that’s why I hate your brand.

*Not a slight against sex work. I’m talking about a lack of agency and awareness around bodies and representation. I’m all for sex-positive, self-aware sex work if that’s your jam, not that you need my permission.

]]>http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/02/19/i-hate-your-brand/feed/6Marketing and Activism Are Not the Same Thinghttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/02/12/marketing-activism-not-thing/
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 18:15:19 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5623Marketing and activism are not the same thing. They can be; however, they often aren’t. At their core, they require completely separate motivations: Marketing is about giving individual people what they want. Activism is about giving groups of people what they need. Marketing is about finding the right wording to get people to buy something […]

Marketing is about finding the right wording to get people to buy something that fits into the cultural zeitgeist.

Activism is about finding the right wording to get people to stop buying the bullshit that is the cultural zeitgeist.

Marketing is about creating a problem for an individual to solve with your product or service.

Activism is finding a cultural problem and doing the service of helping to solve it for others.

Marketing is about influencing individuals to change.

Activism is about influencing groups of people to change.

Marketing is about you.

Activism is about them.

The end game of marketing is making money or getting influence or power.

The end game of activism is making other people money or giving them influence or power.

With some exceptions.

There is a small sub-section of the online marketing world that is slowly getting “woke,” and, in doing so, they’re losing their followings. They’re becoming activists when they meant to be marketers. They’re trying to influence cultural change by raising the voices of other people instead of raising their own #authentic voice.

This small, ragtag group of marketing activists are lost. Because as soon as they stop agreeing to compromise their values to sell an affiliate product that makes their stomach turn or use a hashtag that makes their skin crawl, as soon as they stop associating themselves with keywords and “buy now” triggers (fear, uncertainty, doubt, scarcity) they stop making money.

But they can’t go back to pure marketing because marketing has been co-opted by people who don’t have the same commitment to values — co-opted by people who have taken the language of body positivity and intersectional feminism and made it salable (Stop feeling crazy around food! All bodies are beautiful! Self-care!) to grow their lists and make a quick buck.

And activism — pure activism — doesn’t pay the bills. It does karmically, spiritually, socially. It pays by creating a society that is more fair and more free. But if you can’t pay your own bills, it’s hard to donate time and money to others.

Therein lies the whole paradox: To be an activist, you eschew immediate financial reward, but you need the money in order to be present. To be a marketer, you eschew immediate action toward change, but you need activism in order to be true to your values.

So what is a marketer-turned-activist to do?

The answer is to BE DIFFERENT.

It’s easy to follow the old models of B-School-style marketing: white privilege on display in pastel and gold script, bikinis in headstands on the beach, and minimalist photographs of smoothies and planners.

Bootstrapping and #bossbabe-ing.

It’s easy to follow old models because they’re already done for you.

But the done-for-you is done. And, more important, it doesn’t work if you want to stick to your values.

The thing is, there are too few models of marketers using activism and activists using marketing successfully. Because our main model of online business success is the one that was endorsed by Oprah, it’s hard to convince anyone else that there’s another way that could be successful, even if it hasn’t been fully proven yet.

But the only way to prove it is to try it.

There’s a good chance that it won’t be profitable at first, because so few others are making the effort to be different. Your future clients only have one model for how to buy online — it takes time to shift the paradigm and the behaviors.

But the behaviors don’t shift if someone doesn’t start the shifting. If you constantly sell yourself short in order to sell, you are helping to keep the status quo in place.

If you don’t like scammy list building tactics, don’t use them. Don’t agree to help others use them. If you don’t like taking before-and-after photos and using sketchy hashtags to get found by the algorithm, stop it. If you don’t want to be a brand before being a person, make the decision to be a person first. Culture isn’t going to magically shift so you can start sticking to your guns. You stick to your guns and then others see that they can too — and then the culture shifts.

Be different. Be better. Be an activist and don’t give up on the dream of making a profit as well. But don’t expect that you can make a profit without agreeing to be the shift online coaching culture needs first.

It starts with you and me. It starts with different and better.

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]]>How to Tell Your Story without Reliving Your Storyhttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/01/08/tell-story-without-reliving-story/
Sun, 08 Jan 2017 19:25:51 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5540One of the greatest lessons that the internet ever taught me was that I was not alone. As our barriers have been broken down by social media, people have been bolder and bolder about sharing their stories — and their traumas, their stigmas, and their secrets — without shame in a public forum. As a […]

]]>One of the greatest lessons that the internet ever taught me was that I was not alone.

As our barriers have been broken down by social media, people have been bolder and bolder about sharing their stories — and their traumas, their stigmas, and their secrets — without shame in a public forum.

As a result, I saw that I was not the only one who was suffering, and that my suffering didn’t make me less of a person. In fact, because I found a “tribe” of people like me, it actually enriched me. It made me both unique and similar. A special snowflake in a snowstorm, if you will.

But over the years, I’ve grown tired of trauma. In order to stay a part of the snowstorm, I have to whip myself into a flurry come back to the trauma over and over again — identify with it, or my specialness will melt away.

And so, I told my story over and over and over, even after the story stopped being part of my present and was firmly in my past.

I believe that we have to tell the stories of our traumas and hurts. To normalize them. Remove stigmas. Prevent future traumas. Show others that it gets better.

Ah — but this last point.

It gets better.

But in order for it to get better all the way, you have to stop identifying with your trauma. Separate yourself from it. Look at it from an objective place of hindsight, and not from a place of current, subjective suffering.*

*This is not a call to start bootstrapping yourself when you’re in the middle of major trauma. I’m writing specifically for those who have done the healing work and are ready to move on.

So how do you continue to tell your story — to normalize it for future seekers — without staying in the story?

Believe it or not, I believe that burlesque can help.

I know that people hear “burlesque” and immediately think: No way. I’m not taking off my clothes.

But hear me out:

Burlesque is more than rhinestones, pasties, and tassels. It has become that, especially in the 20th century and in the current neo-burlesque revival, headlined by Dita von Teese.

But did you know that burlesque is actually…a genre?

Like, a literary genre.

A storytelling genre.

Burlesque is parody and satire, plain and simple. It is a commentary on a serious story, told with humor. It juxtaposes tragedy, drama, and expected outcomes with humor, comedy, and the unexpected.

To quoteclassiclit.about.com, “The purpose of burlesque literature is to imitate the manner or the subject matter of a “serious” literary genre, author, or work through a comic inversion.”

And that is what burlesque once was — with the addition of ladies in little clothing, because the risqué is what gets butts in seats (although sexuality and general debauchery can also be used as satire and commentary, too).

classiclit.about.com goes on, “…the point of the burlesque is to create an incongruity, a ridiculous disparity, between the manner of the work and the matter of it.”

And this is why I think that burlesque in particular can be a healing way to tell the story of trauma without forcing you to relive or stay in it.

Burlesque allows you to stand outside of the story (the matter) and tell it with the vantage point of someone who has more information than the characters (the manner). You’re not the character you play; you’re the writer and actor.

When you write/choreograph a burlesque dance number, you have the ability to take the subject matter and wink at the audience knowingly. You can say: I understand this enough to play this character and I know that this is a story that must be told. But I also understand that I am not this character and that this story doesn’t have to continue after the final bow.

Yes, burlesque is also amazing for body positivity and sexual empowerment. I found a lot of healing by taking off my clothing and not being afraid of what others might see.

But it is the ability to tell my story without living my story that has continued to make burlesque a beautiful, challenging, liberating form of art for me.

What story are you holding onto? How could you tell it from the vantage point of someone who has healed and can now control the storyline? Where can you find humor? And can you humanize the main character so that others will be able to identify with them without having to embody that character’s pain after you’re done?

That’s why I wrote my one-woman show, How Lovely to Be a Woman. I believe it’s possible to tell this story without reliving it because I’m making it possible.

This year, my goal is to help make it possible for others. I’d love to hear what you’re holding onto that you believe you need to keep reliving in order to tell it with authenticity. What is your story?

]]>The Problem with Beginner’s Mind in Body Image: Building a Brand from Your Traumahttp://www.performingwoman.com/2017/01/02/beginners-mind/
http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/01/02/beginners-mind/#commentsMon, 02 Jan 2017 23:31:34 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5528One of the most interesting phenomenons to come from the body positivity and recovery movements online is the urge to move from tribe member to coach. If I go into the health coaching groups that I and my coaching friends started ages ago, you’ll now see them swollen with links to people who also are […]

]]>One of the most interesting phenomenons to come from the body positivity and recovery movements online is the urge to move from tribe member to coach.

If I go into the health coaching groups that I and my coaching friends started ages ago, you’ll now see them swollen with links to people who also are becoming or have become coaches. They were a part of this tribe of recovering people (recovering from disordered eating and from eating disorders) and saw its power. They were a part of its power.

And what happens to a lot of people who interact with tribes created by internet marketers is that they see the potential for capital in branching off from that tribe and creating their own. (This happens not just in recovery, but also in just about every online community. If someone can sell the dream, you can too.)

What they don’t realize, however, is that becoming a coach can be a prison for a person in recovery or a person who wants to move past the trauma of a lifetime of poor body image.

Because the blessing and the curse of online body positive coaching is that coaches have to write, by necessity, for beginners.

Even if some of the things we write about are more advanced and require some understanding of concepts like fat activism, the fact that the “you are not fat” statements are actually oppressive, etc., for the most part and in order to bring in new tribe members or potential clients, coaches have to keep writing for the beginner.

It is a blessing that there are coaches (and I know several great ones) who know how to write for the beginner. Who have become solid in their own journeys toward self acceptance while retaining the ability to communicate, over and over and over again, how to be a beginner.

Because it is the beginner who needs coaching. Who needs recovery. Who needs a way in to learn about how to get rid of the scale, stop dieting, and apply/internalize the concepts to their own lives.

But the curse part is that people who have been in process for a long time, who read everything these coaches write, who listen to the podcasts, who participate in the Facebook groups, and even seek to become coaches themselves, continue being inundated with “beginner” material as long as they stay a part of these tribes — long past the point when they should have moved on from being a beginner.

Beginner material, when you are not a beginner is a problem. Because, if you continue to identify as a beginner, you do not move forward. You end up “recovered enough,” constantly holding onto the identity that you’ve created as a beginner so that you don’t lose the community you’ve created with other beginners and people in the tribe.

And what happens is: you end up sitting in your own trauma by refusing to let go of your story.

And no, this is not to blame you for oppressing yourself when there are oppressive forces out there that are doing a good enough job of keeping you locked in self-hatred, nor is this to tell people who are still very much engaged with their traumas and are not recovered yet that they need to bootstrap themselves out of it — this is to enlighten you to the fact that after you’ve done the work, there’s a point where holding onto the work so you can be a part of a community becomes detrimental.

The problem with creating your own tribe or staying in a tribe, when you’ve already surpassed the beginning stages, is that you have to come back to the beginner’s mind in order to understand your potential customer and fellow tribe member. You have to know how to communicate with them—tap into their trauma in order to market the solution or stay relevant to their interests. You have to “meet them where they are,” because they are not at the stage where you can speak to them like they have moved beyond their traumas.

So if you’re not already solid in your recovery/body positivity, coming back to the beginner’s mind can reopen or perpetuate your own identification with trauma. This is how relapse happens.

Or, if you are solid, the constant identity with trauma still keeps you from growing. And the need to keep your trauma around—to be constantly referring to it as a way to identify with others in your tribe or the tribes to which you belong—stops you from Discovery, which means you don’t develop the rest of your life.

Making your personal brand about your trauma can be a great way to amass followers or potentially make money, but even if you reach your “freedom number,” you won’t be making yourself free.

Money and tribe—and the personal brand that grows both—can be a prison.

One of the reasons I quit coaching was because I was exhausted by constantly returning to my traumas in order to remain “authentic” to the beginner who was looking for a guide. Instead of helping forward the people who had been reading and listening for years, I was keeping them stuck by asking them to continue to come back to me, as the authentic expert, for proclamations on how to be a beginner.

I wasn’t my anorexia, but I needed to be in order to keep people on my list.

I saw this happening, and it depleted me. I wasn’t a beginner anymore, and the more I wrote for beginners, the more trapped I felt. And the more I noticed people on my list and in my groups who clung to every scrap and shred of trauma in order to stay relevant with the rest of the group. Every “bad food day” and even every “non scale victory” had to be noticed and dissected. For beginners, that’s important. Because, as a beginner, you have to notice so that you can learn how to do the work.

But once you’re not a beginner anymore, noticing and celebrating and dissecting and constantly talking about your body actually holds you back. Because, eventually, you have to stop noticing so you can make room in your brain for moving on with your life.

Clinging to a community that’s built around the beginner’s first steps away from trauma of any kind can be detrimental the further out from the healing you get. The more you hang around, the more likely you’ll be to accidentally-on-purpose open up some scars.

Which is to say: We need coaches for the beginners, but we don’t need all beginners to seek to become coaches. If you notice in yourself that you’re becoming attached to the idea of building a brand around, making money from, and dedicating your very own community to a trauma, consider whether or not you actually need to do this.

I quit coaching because I wanted to make money and have a personal brand, but I did not want to have to be authentically in my trauma to attract customers to me. I could not read about beginners’ struggles every minute of every day if I wanted to not stay a beginner myself. I needed to step away because, even though I am good at what I did, I did not want to be only good at trauma.

So this is my message to you, tribe members, community seekers, and future coaches: If you truly want to inspire others in your community beyond beginners (because we already have coaches for that), step out of the community and model Discovery. Be the expert on recovering by recovering fully and completely. Move on, move on, move on.

You are more than our trauma. You are not recovery. You have the potential to be and live Discovery. And that is far more important than a health coaching certificate or 1000 friends in a Facebook group will ever be.

]]>http://www.performingwoman.com/2017/01/02/beginners-mind/feed/2Confusing Inspiration with Action in Recovery and Body Positivity http://www.performingwoman.com/2016/12/20/the-work/
Wed, 21 Dec 2016 03:48:21 +0000http://www.performingwoman.com/?p=5524Posting a meme is NOT doing the work. It’s a performance of doing the work, but it is not the work itself. Sometimes the work requires accountability. I know that. Sometimes it requires performance in order to feel like you’re making progress. I know that too. Sometimes it requires feedback and encouragement from others to […]

Sometimes it requires performance in order to feel like you’re making progress. I know that too.

Sometimes it requires feedback and encouragement from others to feel like it’s worthwhile. I have needed that in my own journey.

Sometimes it needs community to maintain, and performing the work visibly helps build and attract that community around you. I’ve done that.

But do not confuse the performance with the work.

What I mean:

There are recovery accounts filled with pictures of food, journaling every morsel, celebrating the act of making food (with the assumption that you are also eating it).

There are body positive accounts that share nothing but feel good quotes about loving yourself (with the assumption that the person posting is taking those words to heart).

There are Beachbody and other weight loss/exercise/diet accounts with before and afters and inspirational words about loving yourself once you reach your goals (with the assumption that the people posting actually love themselves now).*

*Note: if you think that you will love yourself when you’re different in any way, you’ll never love yourself. Once you get there, you’ll realize that you’ve been there all along. So if you don’t love you unconditionally, adding conditions is just a distraction from the work.

I made it a point to start every episode of the Finding Our Hunger podcast with a quote, because quotes are often applicable and inspirational. I made images with those quotes on them to share on Twitter. They’re re-shared over and over, because people feel inspired when they read them, and they feel like they’re doing the work when they share those quotes to their own accounts. I’ve done the same thing: Look at me! Because this image represents the work, and people who do the work share quotes, I am, by the very fact of sharing this quote, doing the work.

What happens, though, is that we get so caught up in the act of presenting ourselves as doing the work that we stop doing the work itself.

Just because I listened to your podcast and felt inspired, I am already there.

Just because I attended this conference and felt inspired, it feels like I already did the work,

Just because I shared this blog post, I showed people what I stand for, even if I’m not actually there yet.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t be sharing posts and memes, but rather to say: stop confusing *just* sharing with finishing the work.

One of my biggest frustrations when I was a coach was getting communication from my listeners and readers and followers who were stuck in the same places for years on end. I’d get an email from someone telling me how much my words hit home or be tagged in an Instagram post about how *this* quote or that made a difference…but then they’d be back, week after week, still struggling. Still unwilling to try a fear food, stop harmful overexercise (even with injuries), or let go of weight checking behaviors.

Posting about how fat is beautiful while fearing fat in their own bodies.

Promising to be a good ally to others while actively hurting themselves.

Because as long as they posted, they were doing the work.

I had to unfriend some bloggers who were posting about how fitspo is bad and recovery is good, but who were using their blogs and inspirational posts as a front to tell others how to be without doing the work themselves. They were actively engaged in eating disorders and exercise addictions, but as long as they posted, they were “doing the work.”

Inspiration is not action.

Just because the quote looks good on your Facebook wall doesn’t mean that you’re done.

Do the work. All the way. Try the fear food. Take off the FitBit. Throw out the scale. Buy the pants in a size larger. Stop fit shaming and food policing others. Get off the unnecessary elimination diet.** Do more than show other people that you mean it. MEAN IT.

**Obviously, this message is not for anyone who actually has a food allergy or medical condition and requires such a diet. I’m not a doctor or nutritionist, so don’t mistake anything I say for professional medical advice, etc.

At the beginning, it might help to show the world what you mean. But mean it. Do it. If the quote inspires you, don’t just be inspired. DO IT. If you want to recover, I don’t care how pretty the calligraphy on your quote is. I care about whether or not you ate more than your nutrition bar or Paleo-perfect, calorie controlled AIP breakfast.

If you want to be body positive, I don’t care about how inclusive your quote is. I care about whether or not you’re still holding onto the food scale or the tape measure just in case you “need” them for accountability.

If you want to do the work, I don’t care if you’re part of my “tribe.” I care about whether or not you actually started building a life for yourself—discovery—that’s going to give you something to continue living for after recovery.

Don’t let the internet fool you into thinking that you’re already there in real life. A meme is only virtual reality until you start living it.